News Math

Bumblebees navigate new turf without a map

The insects can quickly calculate the best route between flowers

By Rachel Ehrenberg

- More than 2 years ago

Bumblebees are anything but bumbling: The insects quickly figure out the optimal route for visiting five far-flung flowers, a computational task that even human brains find challenging.

PIT STOP Bumblebees don’t need a map to know where they’re going. A large-scale experiment that outfitted the insects with radar antennas (shown) revealed that bumblebees are adept at figuring out the optimal route among several flowers, a tough computational problem.